


Everybody Hates a Tourist

by tulipohare



Category: DCU (Animated)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-06
Updated: 2014-09-06
Packaged: 2018-02-14 14:02:02
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,261
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2194431
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tulipohare/pseuds/tulipohare
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It’s early September in Gotham, and spiders are gathering on rooftops to liquefy disease-carrying insects, and fear is for people who’ve never executed a perfect Kulbit.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Everybody Hates a Tourist

**Author's Note:**

> I watched Justice League: War and everyone was strange and young and kind of off-putting and not at all how we remember them. I can’t honestly say it was good but it must have been _something_ because this happened.

 

What happens is Hal fucks up.

That thing some superwit decided to call Solomon Grundy is throwing the godfather of tantrums on a miserable stormy evening in Metropolis, which, can you really blame him? Superman’s in Bangalore trying to contain an army of vengeful AI ragebots and everyone else was asleep until ten minutes ago, plus it’s hailing, so come on.

Hal is hoisting a sphere construct for Batman and himself, midair, trying desperately to catch up with Barry and Diana. Three blocks, not far now, just around that abandoned building, and suddenly an entire steel shipping container crashes through the fourth story, and his concentration slips.

He takes the brunt of it, grinning, watching bricks glance off of himself easily, and doesn’t hear the strangled yell of Batman falling until it’s way too late.

Batman somehow gets off a shot of that grappling gun and manages to not burst open on the pavement. He hits the side of the building with a sickening loud thump, and ducks his head as rubble crashes down around him.

There isn’t time, and Grundy barrels down the alley with Shazam draped over his back unsuccessfully trying to choke him out, so Hal can feel himself staring at Bruce and he can also feel himself gaining altitude, and gathering his will, and pressing on. The words come easily.

Batman, Bruce is in a heap on the pavement, a full body wince and a twisted face, rope still looped around his wrist. Hal lands hands first, runs them efficiently down the thick armor of Bruce's chest, looking for blood, protruding splinters of ribs.

“Did you bring him down?” Bruce says through a torn lip.

“Shit,” Hal says.  
  
"I'm fine," Bruce grits, and slowly clambers to his feet  
  
"Right," Hal says, "rub some dirt on it. Do you even  _have_  a rotator cuff anymore?"  
  
Bruce narrows his eyes at him, and there, Hal’s fingers hit a snag, a wetness at the base of Bruce's throat.  
  
"Let me see,” Hal says  
  
"Are you a hotshot medic, too?" Bruce asks.  
  
"Stop being a tool."  
  
Bruce peels off the cowl with one hand, the other held to his body awkwardly. There's a chunk of wood, shrapnel dug into the dip of his collarbone and it's leaking slow and steady.  
  
"Do you want me to—“  
  
"Yeah," Bruce says, "Count me off."  
  
Hal takes a grip, slippery and red, and pulls it out on two.  
  
Bruce grunts, and Hal brings up a construct, tiny green platelets and bandage, to hold him together until he can see a doctor. They both stare up at the decimated fourth floor of the building and pant for a long moment.  
  
Hal clears his throat, quickly looks down at the tin awning Bruce took with him when he made impact.  
  
"That was, uh," Hal says "my fault, I think," and this gets him the subtle purse of lips that connotes Batman having an emotion.  
  
"I mean, I'm sorry," Hal says.  
  
"Don't hurt yourself," Bruce says.  
  
"Yeah, fuck you," Hal says, not meaning it, not feeling it like he might've a few weeks ago.  
  
"No really," Bruce says, his face that impassive mask, "that was a real strain. Sit down."  
  
Hal is not expecting to laugh. It's a sharp surprise, and he laughs himself into a sway forward until their chests are touching. He means it as a reassurance, the grateful hard bump when your wingman touches down whole, but Bruce’s body just... gives, and Hal stays close for a beat of silence just this side of awkward.  
  
When he pulls back, Bruce is holding himself very still, looking very neutral.  
  
Hal says, “I won’t drop you again.”  
  
Nothing from Bruce but the level and the calculating.  
  
Hal hears, for some reason, his mother -- and isn't that a kick in the crotch -- saying "Watch where you're going Hal, Jesus!"  
  
So he tries a grin, and rises, and doesn’t look down until he’s at least angels ten.

  
***

 

It’s barely six am and Carol’s in his ear saying “So Hal, I need your opinion.”

Hal holds the phone up with a shoulder and opens his freezer to stare at a bag of flaxseed that he definitely doesn’t remember buying.

“There’s a bag of flaxseed in my freezer, Caro,” he says, and shakes it a couple of times.

“Cool. Put it on your cereal,” Carol says, “and come in, I need your opinion on this kid. General discharge. Prone to occasional stupid flat-hatting but I think she’s going to be worth it. She’s in East looking at the Typhoon like she wants to fuck it.”

“This expired two years ago,” says Hal, “What do you want in your coffee?”

Carol’s smile is audible, “Everything.”

He stands in line at the café for ten minutes and listens to the television drone soothing morning show news about one philanthropist’s mission to provide disadvantaged Gotham youth with—wait.

Dressed up in the rich WASP collection 2014 and a vacuous smile, Bruce is shaking hands with community leaders and struggling to even push a shovel into dirt at a groundbreaking ceremony. A small boy stands at his side, face creased up like he knows a joke no one else is getting.

Hal feels the laugh spill out of him, sees the person in front of him in line startle, and scrubs his hand over his face.

South of normal doesn’t really begin to cover it.

“The kid” that Carol’s referring to is former Lt. Shay Montgomery. Hal watches her DACT tapes in Carol’s office and laughs out loud at the Thach weave she and her wingman execute.

“She’s good,” he allows, and Carol smirks over her coffee and gestures vaguely with a pinky toward the E3 hangar.

“Do me a favor?”

 

The desert is beginning to warm, sun painting the wide-open hangar and the birds.

Shay Montgomery stands under an on-loan Eurofighter, listening intently to Dr. Kalmaku talk thrust-to-weight ratio. Her pantsuit is very slightly too small, probably hadn’t seen daylight in years. And yeah, that’s--familiar. Hal has nine of the exact same shirt and not much else for a reason.

He walks over with his hand extended.

Shay’s almost as tall as he is, says “might could” like she’s from the same sparse southern places his parents were. When he casually strolls her over to the hangar door and asks her in his best business voice why she wants Ferris Aircraft, she cracks her neck, gives something between a laugh and a groan.

“Well, sir.” she says, “I could tell you a lot of bullshit that would sound very nice."

Hal does not successfully smother his snort of laughter.

"If colorful actions get you fired, that's it," he says, "You know that right? There's nothing else like this." 

Almost nothing.

The grin beginning to spread across her face slips, and the clench of her jaw is visible.

"That's fair, sir."

 

***

 

Hal doesn’t mean to hover over the Ritz Carlton in Gotham, exactly, but he had been in the general vicinity of the east coast, and there’s always crime in Gotham, and Bruce Wayne is hosting a raucous party in the center of it that you can’t help but notice. He lights down a level above the jutting rooftop garden, fire escape and lightning rods tucked away where they won’t mess with the aesthetic. And spiders, always spiders all over the tops of tall buildings. He should probably look that up.

Music and voices float up to him. He doesn’t mean to stare, but he never did take this kind of thing well, smooth suits and satin comparing yachts, lobbyists, return on factories moved to developing countries. Hal thinks of Bruce crawling around the sewers in a cape and gets suddenly and fiercely angry.

“Fuck you, rich boy,” he says.

A low chuckle floats out behind him, and honestly, Hal’s not even surprised.

Bruce looks somewhat rumpled, and he’s leaning in the doorway to the maintenance stairs, one shoulder hitched up against the frame. 

“I was hiding out in the security surveillance room,” Bruce says and walks over to the ledge below Hal, “Don’t you have somewhere to be?”

 "You have a kid?" Hal says, and Bruce turns away a little, hands shoved deep in his pockets.

 _Because he’s smiling_ , Hal thinks suddenly, and twists to see.

He is, small but intensely fond, hunching down into his suit that Hal is not remotely classy enough to know the name of.

"I do," Bruce says, “Richard. He’s a few handfuls. Funny as hell, though.”

It’s faintly cool up on the roof, summer’s end comes fast out here, and Hal touches down softly on the far side of the balcony.

Bruce looks down at the city and rolls his shoulders.

"You probably shouldn't be lurking around here in uniform," he says to the gargoyle in front of him, "Someone eventually will put it together."

Hal folds his arms across his chest and leans back against the brick.

"Yeah, I don't lurk--" he starts, but Bruce turns on him, stalks forward.

“I know why,” Bruce says, “what you’re doing here."  
  
"What is this thing where you think you know me?" Hal says, but there is no malice, not even really a joke behind the question.  
  
"I told you." Bruce says.

He did. Months ago.

_We’re just somewhat...alike._

Hal swallows, and then

“Did you dig up anything on that kid from El Paso? I know he’s been helping out the city, seems pretty benign, but the ring’s wary whenever I go out that way and the only thing that does that is alien tech—“

Bruce puts his hand on Hal’s waist, warmth passing through his shield, through his uniform.

“Don’t move, Hal,” he says.

Hal gets an image, probably scrapped together from the remnants of his last Anglophile girlfriend--Bruce in a private school uniform with a loosened tie, looking callous and kissing some LAX bro--and rolls his eyes so hard it kind of hurts. But he doesn't move.

And Bruce sinks to his knees.

He's patient and cool, setting upon Hal like he's in a clinic, a lab, provoking a reaction and testing for repeatability. It's distant and it's kind of off-putting and from the first hot rush of tongue Hal can barely hang on. He gets a cramp in his hand from clutching at the brick behind him and bursts of color behind his eyes from screwing them shut. When Bruce pulls off his dick and stands Hal cries like a fucking dog and thrusts into the night air, comically, horribly.  
  
He breaks the rules then and grabs Bruce's waist, trying to swallow the oncoming shakes, but Bruce doesn't growl, doesn't seem to notice. His face is intent and calm and his hair in place and he puts two fingers in Hal’s mouth. A slow rub under Hals tongue, along the inside of his cheek, and he's trying to bite and suck so Bruce brings his other hand up, holding Hal’s jaw still.  
  
Then he's pulling away again, back down to his knees and he's reaching down, under, behind, nudging Hals legs further apart and rubbing those wet fingers in tiny circles over Hals hole.  
  
Hal is gone he's gone he's across the galaxy he's making ludicrous strangled sounds and pulling at Bruce's hair and fucking long strokes against Bruce's cheek.  
  
And then Bruce grabs Hal's cock at the base and Hal's pinned back to the wall and Bruce, like he's really wondering if it's possible, as if he's actually just meaning to test a hypothesis, says "Can you come on my face? Do you think you can do that?"  
  
Hal’s spine crumbles and flares, and when he regains awareness, Bruce is wiping come out of an eye with the back of his wrist, and _Jesus_.

Call it fair play, call it goading, Hal reaches out and brushes fingers against the front placket of Bruce’s pants, and gets a jerk backwards that smooths from startled to casual a little too slowly.

Bruce turns away, still methodically cleaning his face with a sleeve.

But restoring force must be setting in on that thing Bruce told him all those weeks ago, because it went one way, and now it is going the other. Because instead of protesting, shrugging and leaving, or pushing, Hal leans back against the brick, and scratches an ear, and waits.

Eventually, because yes, now he knows too, Bruce digs his chin into Hal’s shoulder, makes tiny, furtive painful sounds, and lets Hal bring him off. One hand down his pants and one at the back of Bruce’s neck, holding him steady.

The party goes on and on, below.

After, Hal reaches for something to say, and lands on, “What’s with the spiders?”

“Skyscrapers act as mountains,” Bruce says, “Insects get caught in the updraft and spiders ride the currents on silk parachutes to eat them. As do birds. And bats.”

Hal watches Bruce arrange himself back into his clothes, leaving a careful sheen of dishevelment, pull a tube of lipstick out of his pocket and smear it artfully on his neck, his cheek.

“You’ve got problems, Bruce,” Hal says.

Bruce raises his eyebrows, like, _And?_

“Come by the house tomorrow,” he says, “You can tell Dick about your planes. He wants to fly.”

Now hang on a minute.

But Bruce is gone, through the maintenance door and back down to his shining people.

It’s early September in Gotham, and spiders are gathering on rooftops to liquefy disease-carrying insects, and fear is for people who’ve never executed a perfect Kulbit.

Hal takes off.


End file.
